Archaeology and Other Things

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Blogging 101

So last year I signed up to WordPress’s Blogging 101 course. I still haven’t done it but I have the email links and do intend to go through it at some point. Life just keeps getting in the way.

I’m not entirely sure why I started this blog to be honest. A number of factors including the fact that blogging is more popular than ever may have contributed to it, but I really hoped that it might help me write more, and develop a more personal writing style.

The thing is you see, … I really hate writing. I find it hard to bring myself to do it and putting down though first few words is some kind of hellish torture. However last year I discovered that I could use the stream of consciousness model to help me with my academic note taking. It wasn’t as hard as writing an essay or preparing a paper for presentation. And I think, I kind of hoped, that blogging would help me overcome this disastrous fear of writing that has plagued me since I was young.

I wrote this tidbit below when I last got the urge to write something:

“Do you think writing comes easily to novelists? What does it take to put words to paper, and then through some unknowable process a story is born? Sometimes I guess everyone gets the urge to write. Though much as a prosaic and affable writing style entrances the reader, I confess it has never come easily to me. Well bollocks to that. It’s time to start a new chapter – but what to write about?

I think, given the opportunity all children would be avid readers. Memories of reading late into the night, hiding with a torch under the bedclothes so as not wake my sister remind me just how powerful the pull of a story is. Hour after hour was spent in the company of friends, family and in worlds that are no longer so real. Growing up has its disadvantages.

I wished to grow old all the time as a child. I imagined (and still do) that my favourite age will be in my sixties or seventies, tiring of the world but having found joy and given life. How I wish I could tell my younger self to have more confidence, to take more risks, to have played and to have lived. There is still time for that I suppose, but the blindness of youth gives a certain ease to exploration and the intrepid spirit.”

Looking back on it, it’s already an incredibly pretentious bit of monologuing.

Thinking about wanting to write more but also not wanting to become massively pretentious about it doesn’t necessary mean that your writing won’t still be pretentious…

I meant to start this blog about my adventures in archaeology, but I think it may be better to just wait and see what it evolves into.